Webinar – Page 2 – Digital Learning Dispatches

On Monday March 16th, the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) is pleased to partner with the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) to host this special online webinar. As many Irish universities and higher education institutions around Europe look to move swiftly to online teaching in response to the Coronavirus, this webinar will share a number of valuable tips and helpful suggestions from experienced educators.

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The intention is to provide some quite practical ideas and relatively simple ways of how educators with limited prior online teaching experience can engage students in active and meaningful online learning experiences. The session draws on evidence from theory, research and best practice to demonstrate how online teaching can be a creative, highly interactive and very effective way for students to keep learning under the current challenging circumstances. There will be opportunities for participants to ask questions and we invite other experienced online educators to join the webinar to contribute their own suggestions for an active back channel discussion.

EADTU has a long history of supporting distance education (DCU is Ireland’s only member), and seeks to share its experience drawing on key European partners in helping universities and other educational institutions to keep teaching in the face of campus closures.

When:

12:00 noon (GMT), Monday 16th March (1:00pm CET)

Where:

Click on this link to join the Zoom webinar room:

https://dcu-ie.zoom.us/j/701759679

Related Resources:

https://www.dcu.ie/nidl/resources/Swiftly-Moving-Online-Coronavirus.shtml

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This week is “Open Education Week” and several members of the NIDL team have already contributed, or will be over the next few days, to a range of activities and related events. On Tuesday, for example, Professor Mark Brown moderated a webinar on “The Story of the Open University” as part of EDEN’s programme of activities for the week . You can read more about this webinar and what the four distinguished panel members had to share on a blog written by Professor Grainne Conole. A recording will also be available on EDEN’s website.

On Wednesday, Professor Grainne Conole gave a presentation on “Open Education into the Future” as part of another EDEN webinar on the broader theme of “Ongoing Initiatives for Open Education in Europe“. The slides from Grainne’s talk can be accessed below and a recording will also be available on EDEN’s website:

Open education week_webinar from Grainne Conole

And on Friday in another contribution to EDEN’s webinar series, Professor Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl is participating on a panel discussion on the topic of “Researching Openness – Evidenced-based Approaches“. More specifically this webinar will explore the following questions:

How openness is approach in research? Thematic overview (levels of openness, other dimensions that are addressed through research publications, e.g. open online learning, open distance learning, OER, OEP, etc.).
What impact does openness have upon education?
What kind of openness do we (society) need?
What are the characteristics of open learning, open curriculum, open education and open learner/ teacher?

Dublin City University (DCU) has a long history of Open Education and our commitment spans all three traditional pillars of university work: research, teaching and service. For example, last year DCU was the first Irish University to launch an open access press through a strategic partnership with University College London (UCL). The Open Education Unit in the NIDL continues to play a key role in the provision of online distance education through the DCU Connected platform as part of DCU’s wider mission of opening access to higher education and transforming lives and societies. Our NIDL team also makes a significant contribution to the Open Education agenda through service activities, with many of our staff serving on the executive committees of major professional bodies working in the area. There is also a strong Open Education dimension to this year’s ICDE World Conference on Online Learning that DCU is hosting in the Convention Centre Dublin in November.